Likeminded
by Prophet-Domino
Summary: Two souls, forgotten and alone. United together at the end of their lives. Battered and broken, lonely and lost, they find solace in each other. TARDISxImpala (It sounds weird, but it's not, I promise) Sort of major character death, but that's not the focus. Sadness and the companionship of two abandoned things- I may or may not have cried while writing this. Also on Ao3. Oneshot.


She knew when he was gone.  
She could feel it.

One moment he was there, and she could sense him, not so far away, close enough to detect the complexity, the spiderwebbing tangle of lives, the golden aura that was his soul. And then the next moment, without a whisper of warning, he was Not.

She had hoped that he wasn't gone. She had scanned for everything; any traces of his unique biological signature, any spike in energy signatures, every detectable trace of alien life. She had run away from the melancholy of the human that had cried on her barred door. She had scoured the universe for him, every planet, every moon, every satellite, spaceship, civilisation, every fraction of every second that the universe was in being, from the big bang to the end of everything, birth and death, order and entropy.

Seeing when the genesis of eternity began to take corporeal shape. Witnessing the universe's final yellow beacon-star sucked down into the unfathomable depths of a black hole. Observing the swirling formation of Gallifrey, the orbiting dust and debris coming together in a rushing crescendo of red rebirth, her home a stunning, primordial mass of crimson beauty and a fiery, passionate rage.  
Breaking the time locks and looking on, apathetic, as it burnt.

Nothing. Nothing, not even nothing. A vast and empty and aching nothingness that resounded throughout the universe and thrumming as the heartbeat of infinity itself as if it were baiting her and taunting and haunting and everything the same with an unfillable hole torn through the centre of all things and the universe just carried on and left her behind without her heart and soul. Left her without her Doctor.

Sending out her call, that he had gone, she heard the lamenting cry of a thousand uncountable races, mourning to the heavens; but no reassuring reply would return to her, nothing but commiserations and memorials burning in the sky.

She knew that she couldn't come to terms with it. And so she visited them.

She was silent now, materialising without a sound. It felt right that way. Never letting herself leave that brake on, never allowing that voice of freedom and hope to cry out, for she could no longer offer it any more.

She found them. Most on Earth, though some were so very far away. They had their own lives now, with partners and children and places of their own and worlds to rebuild and books to write and little tin dogs to adopt. They had found their own family, now they no longer needed her; for when she slunk into UNIT and Torchwood and Bannerman Road, they no longer noticed her, silently slipping in and out of the fabric of reality.

And because he was gone, she began to shut down. The ship that was infinite started to close down her rooms, one at a time, sweeping aside wardrobes and tennis courts and bedrooms and swimming pools for they meant nothing to her but hollow echoes of what once was.

Aeons passed in a moment.  
And so she wandered alone.

Time passed.  
Time passed.

~.*.~

He too, was alone.

His brothers were gone. His angel was gone. One had died in the line of fire and then one had faded to oblivion and the last had sent a bullet charging through his own skull. Waiting for them to return, as they always did, was futile. Because he had been abandoned by his boys, away from any life in the middle of nowhere. All that he could have done was watch as bodies were lain on the back seat: one black-bruised and bloodied, a hole stabbed through the crag of his chest; one a burnt out shell, stolen grace escaping the hollow vessel so devoid of life. After taking his brother's gun from the glove compartment, the last had run his hand along the roof as a poor semblance of a final farewell. He did nothing but watch as the youngest left him, both of their spirits equally anguished, a torment for the last sole survivor, as the thud of his body hit the ground, teartracked and bleak eyed as dust devils flew, whirling in the neverending beige aridity that was the desert.  
He was gone before he hit the floor.

The world turned autumnal. It snowed. Life began to return. Summer came and went. The temperature began to dip again.

Time passed.  
Time passed.

His antique soul was lost and confused, for there was no companionship for an old car that meant nothing to anyone. Feeling as if he were desperately trying to hold himself together, he waited for someone to come back to him; the brothers' friends to return and pick the rust out of his stillborn engine, play the tapes that once screamed classic rock now coated in a veil of uncaringly colourless dust, clean out the salt that itched in the trunk or answer the phones that had stopped ringing long ago, that presently lay motionless, deceased on the passenger seat.

Shotgun. It meant something, once. He could no longer remember what.

Aggressively, as if it were determined to inflict the power of its heat upon him, the sun bore down on the hood, the last vestiges of a king succumbing to winter's grasp, marring the black coat of paint that was now peeling off the surface of his metal bones.

He didn't mind. He was going now. Nobody needed him. He could leave.

His soul was beginning to depart, to dissipate into nothingness as his body fell waste to the unstoppable force that was nature.

And then one day, as he was leaving this plane of existence, she appeared.

Coming out of nowhere. It was but an instant, and then she was there, a spirit blue in colour and hue, standing as a watchman next to him, and he could feel her soul; so old, so loved, now so empty, her heart ripped out from her chest. A kindred spirit. She understood. She knew.

They took reassurance from each other. Mutually alone, they found solace in their companionship. She had forgotten how to feel. He was no longer willing to go on. And she reminded him to stay with her, and he taught her to feel again. And the apathy and emptiness began to cede to make way for the love that they had once found in their boys. It could never replace that; they were both undeniably shattered, with cracks that could never be fixed, but the pieces could be put back together and in doing so, they were a little less broken in the company of each other.

And metal rusted and wood decayed and nobody paid any attention to the pair of lost souls lain to rest at the side of the road.

~.*.~

**A/N: ****So I had this odd idea and it started as crack, but I made it into angst in typical fashion. I'm sorry. Not really.**

**It's short, but it couldn't be anything otherwise, really, but I like it, in a sad sort of way.**

**It's a headcannon of mine that in a certain universe, the Doctor died on Trenzalore without giving his name, and Dean died at the end of s9, and so Cas let his grace burn out and Sam just lost the will to continue. And in that universe, the TARDIS and the Impala end up together, two lonely old souls falling into ruin with each other for the remainder of their lives.**

**(Oh Lord please someone stop me, what am I even doing?)**


End file.
